We always use sharp high speed tools and water-soluable coolants. 150-175 SFM for Delrin,6/6,Rulon,Nylon 30% glass-filled. Some coolants make the material swell a little though so you might not want to use coolant at all. Maybe you have a cold air gun? Rick

Went from 6-8 and now 9. Great changes from 6-8. I was also using Pro-NC and the new Version 8 came out with a format that was close to Pro-NC with the dropdown menus, parameters, etc. So, I caught onto it really quick.

Rekd, We have the Erowa Quick change system on most of our Deckel Maho machines and on our Fadals we have a 16c air collet system that is exceptional for gripping round parts. The Erowa system is the way to go if it's in the budget. Rick www.erowatech.com

Mark, Thanks for the link! Rick

Glad to see everybody is still enjoying the forum. The shop I was working for folded in July and I have been on unenjoyment for 3 months. I finally landed a great job as plant manager at Magnus Precision Mfg. Inc. It is Company with-in a bigger company called Floturn. We do alot of 5-axis mill work w/ MASTERCAM. Take a look at our web sight. www.magnuscnc.com It's great to be back in the light again. Rick

Ken, I would always do a full back-up beforehand. I only had a few glitches when we changed over to ver.9 I had one guy saving files with spaces in them and they would not come through. I will give you an example. 1234 housing.mc8 Should be 1234housing.mc8 or 1234_housing.mc8 Maybe I am the only one that had this problem???

Eric, What I have done in the past is to write a basic program that uses every option available for that machine; e.g. drilling, deep drilling, tapping, circular interpolation, thread milling, etc. The guys could cut and paste what they needed and then change the numbers in the program like drill depth, speeds, and feeds. This is very handy and fast if the guys know the basics for programming. Always save the original program for future back-ups when the guys change that program before they cut and paste. Hope this helps. It is the cheapest way out and will save alot of time and money.

LM, If I am going to change a part I have already posted I will sometime times save the part as something else before hand and use that. Then I can always go back to the "old rev." if needed. Use eg: 12345.mc9 and save as 12345_1.mc9

Trevor, I had a little hands on class for a few hours and I was amazed at how fast the controller processed the program. It was very user friendly not like the old Siemens controllers. Once someone says Siemens people used to run but they have come a long way in the past ten years.

Hello Peter. We had an Okuma LT10M and it was a nightmare with mastercam. There were to many "fudgefactors" that we had to put into the post to get it to output anything even close. You need a very excellent post writer for this machine. You will also pay a pretty penny for the post and still have to debug it for years to come. Rick

.PRT IS AWESOME. A LITTLE BIT OF MONEY BUT IT WILL PAY FOR ITSELF IN NO TIME AT ALL

PROGRAM WITH CONVERSATIONAL SOFTWARE AT THE MACHINE? A BIG NO FROM ME. KEEP THAT MACHINE RUNNING AND SPITTING OUT PARTS AND PROGRAM OFF LINE. THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE MONEY IS TO KEEP THOSE MACHINES RUNNING. I WOULD HOPE OTHERS AGREE???

Tyson. 1st round. JUGGLER VEIN

Most of the time when you get a refurbed board you will pay half the price and get the same warranty

This is my old girlfriends name!!! She couldn't speek good englis. i'm sorry. I thought it said IMAHO [ 05-24-2002, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: Rick ]